Essays

by Montaigne, Michel de; Screech, M. A.

• ISBN13: 9780141389646
• ISBN10: 0141389648
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-11-06
• Publisher: Penguin Classics Hardcover

Summary

A lavish hardcover collector’s edition of one of the most influential works ever written

How to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love—such questions arise in most people’s lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: How do you live? This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel de Montaigne, who wrote free-roaming explorations of his thoughts and experiences unlike anything written before, and in the process invented the genre of the essay.

Montaigne influenced many of the world’s greatest writers, from Shakespeare to Rousseau to Emerson to Christopher Hitchens, and readers still come to him more than four hundred years later in search of companionship, wisdom, and entertainment—and in search of themselves.

This beautiful, oversized, deluxe edition of Essays—bound in gold-lettered cloth, complete with a ribbon bookmark and full-sized facsimiles of Montaigne’s first folio pages—deserves to stand as a centerpiece in any personal library.

Author Biography

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) studied law and spent a number of years working as a counselor. At the age of 38, he retired from public life and devoted himself to a life of solitude, reading, writing, and reflection. He is considered to have invented the genre of the personal essay and his work deeply influenced many of the world’s other preeminent writers, from Shakespeare to Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

M. A. Screech is an emeritus fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is recognized as a world authority on the Renaissance and was inducted into the French Legion of Honor for his translation of Essays.